Toxic Masculinity

 August 2, 2022

The boys were a threat. Pharaoh was worried that they would grow up into toxic masculinity, so his solution to the problem was to have them killed at the outset. Unlike many medical providers today, the Hebrew midwives refused to go along with his solution. They were history’s first recorded pro-lifers. In a strange ironic twist, 1400 years later when Herod wanted to kill Jesus because he would grow up to be a man toxic to Herod’s murderous ways, it was to Pharaoh’s old stomping grounds Joseph took the boy and his mother. I think God was poking the devil in the eye.

Today we live in a similar culture of death. Killing babies is considered health care. We haven’t yet tried to force it upon people, but signs are pointing in that direction. For those baby boys that survive the womb, death comes in a thousand cuts. Generally speaking, boys are more kinetic learners, but we demand they sit for hours at a time in school, and medicate them if they do not. Our culture tells them their natural aggression is bad, and is working 24/7 to emasculate them. Strong males are seen as dangerous, to be feared and caged unless he is tender and nurturing. The fact is, strong young men are dangerous, but they are also capable of a greatness that the Destroyer would cut off at the knees. 

Our society is filled with would-be Pharaohs and Herods who rightly fear the power of a godly man. Sadly, too many of our churches cater only to women; a man of the world takes one step inside and knows this place is not designed for him. My prayer tonight is for the Church to wake up and challenge young men to boldly risk all in a venture so audacious and even dangerous that it requires the very best they can give, to lay alongside its nurturing and comforting message a clarion call to rugged discipleship, to leave that garden where “he walks with me and talks with me,” and shoulder a cross, following Christ to a lonely hill where life is willingly laid down for the sake of a generation yet to come. Such men are indeed toxic—to those who seek only their own advancement. To the rest of us, they are a ray of hope in a sin-darkened world.